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- Herausgeber: Next Chapter
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
As Liverpool's Special Murder Investigation Squad prepares for Christmas, Detective Inspector Andy Ross receives a phone call.
Someone has murdered Santa Claus (well, a department store Santa). As the officer on call for the night, Ross attends with his sergeant Izzie Drake, and begins one of the strangest investigations of his career.
With the main suspects being Santa Claus himself, in cahoots with an elf, Ross needs luck - and lots of it - as he seeks to solve the mystery of A Merry Mersey Christmas.
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A Merry Mersey Christmas
(or, who killed Santa Claus?)A Short Story
Brian L. Porter
Copyright (C) 2018 Brian L. Porter
Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter
Published 2019 by Next Chapter
Cover Design by Cover Mint
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.
From the Author
A Merry Mersey Christmas has been written in response to reader requests for a special Christmas story revolving around Detective Inspector Andy Ross and the Merseyside Police, Specialist Murder Investigation Squad. Not an easy task to condense a full-blown murder mystery into a short story, but, as my thanks to all those who continue to support the series, here's a special story to celebrate the team, and to wish a Happy Christmas to all my readers, for Christmas 2018. I hope you enjoy this rather more light-hearted tale of an unusual crime that takes place three days before Christmas. Can Ross, Izzie Drake and the team solve the murder of a Department Store Santa Claus in time to have Christmas Day off? Let's see, shall we?
The Mersey Mystery Series
You don't need to have read any of the books in the series in order to enjoy this short story, but if you'd like to take a look at the novels in the series, please go to my author page.
Books in the series:
A Mersey Killing
All Saints, Murder on the Mersey
A Mersey Maiden
A Mersey Mariner
A Very Mersey Murder
Last Train to Lime Street
The Mersey Monastery Murders
Special Note
You will find a reference in this story to 'bizzies'. For those unfamiliar with the local vocabulary in Liverpool, the word is an old slang term, simply meaning, the police.
Chapter 1
The Call
“You're kidding me, surely? Is this a wind-up? It's three days before Christmas.” Andy Ross almost shouted down the phone, in response to a call from the control room at Merseyside Police Headquarters, to his home. It was eight-thirty in the evening, the date was December 22nd, and he and his wife, Maria were about to sit down to a late evening meal, having spent an hour wrapping presents for relatives and friends.
“It's no joke, D.I. Ross,” Jenny, the control room supervisor assured him. “The call was confirmed by the officer on the scene.”
“But the victim. That can't be real, can it?”
“Afraid so, and as you are the senior officer on call, you get the pleasure of responding. I've also called Sergeant Drake and she said to tell you she'll meet you there.”
“And just where is, there?” Ross inquired, as he realised Jenny still hadn't given him a location for the crime.
“Pearson's Emporium,” she replied. “It's that new cheap department store that opened in the old closed down bank on…”
“I know where it is, thanks, Jenny.”
“I'll leave it with you then, shall I? Just make sure there isn't a double-parked sled with half a dozen reindeer attached when you get there,” she joked.
“Okay, I'm convinced. I'll be there asap,” Ross confirmed. As he placed the phone back in its place on the cradle, in its place on the hall table, close to the front door of his home in Prescot, a few miles from Liverpool City Centre, Maria appeared through the door from the lounge.
“Not a call-out, surely?” she looked disappointed, but resigned to the fact this was all part of her husband's job.
“Sorry, but yes. You'll never believe it,” he hesitated before continuing. He had a wry smile on his face, unusual considering his evening had just been disrupted.
“Go on, spit it out,” said Maria, “What won't I believe?”
Unable to contain himself, Andy Ross took hold of his wife, one hand on each shoulder, and pulled her , him, gave her a short but loving kiss and whispered in her ear, “Someone just killed Santa Claus!”
“Andy, don't play silly buggers with me. Come on, what's happened to drag you out at this time of night?”
“I just told you. Someone killed Santa,” he looked her in the eyes and Maria could tell he was deadly serious.
“You mean it, don't you?”
“Yes, looks like someone knocked off the department store Santa at that low-price department store, Pearson's Emporium, in town.”
Ross took his mobile phone from its place on the charger in their bedroom as he extricated his warm, camel-coloured overcoat that Maria had bought him a couple of Christmases ago, and dropped the phone into one of its deep pockets. He picked up his brown leather gloves, added a pair of black leather shoes, a real mismatch with his coat and gloves and was out of the door and in his car within ten minutes of receiving the call from headquarters.
